Vibrance
by Twilight Joltik
Summary: Italy always puts a lot of emotion into his painting, and feels better at expressing how he feels through brushstrokes than words. Still, you can't exactly use a painting as a love confession, so he tries to do it the proper way and ends up writing a letter that's somewhere in between. Letter-format one-shot, GerIta, basically about color meanings.


_**AN- Look, I wrote a thing when I should be doing other things. But I had an inspiration bug, and I needed to get it out. So here, have some GerIta! So, thanks and enjoy! -Twilight Joltik**_

* * *

 _Tesoro,_

 _There are days when I feel nothing. When I stare at the blank canvas for hours and nothing appears on it. Days when I just think that I wish I could find that brilliant light._

 _But, more often, there are days when I feel everything, but it's too much. When I can see a hundred thousand possibilities and none of them are quite right. When I'm blinded by that light I so often seek._

 _That's how you make me feel. All the emotions fill me up and make a light so brilliant I can't speak them aloud. So instead, I create._

 _Alright, let me back up a bit._

 _There is little I love more than my own ideas taking form in brush strokes and graphite lines. It makes me feel alive, even after so many hundreds of years. I can pour my heart out into it, express every drop of emotion in my body, and no one would ever have to know where it all came from._

 _The reflections of the moon in the lake are from my grandpa. The tree's shadows are Austria. The bug-eaten leaves are Romano._

 _Okay, maybe not quite like that, but it's that sort of emotion. Longing, isolation, loneliness, they invoke themselves in images and colors._

 _And it's not all sad. Okay, usually it's not all sad, but sometimes and- well, I'm getting off topic. I'll sketch a bird's wing and think of Prussia. See Poland in the crimson of a flame. Think of Japan in the falling of leaves. Mimic your eyes in the shade of the sky, but I can never quite capture it._

 _So in a way, every painting I do is a tiny snapshot of my life. Tiny details and decisions are all the sum of everything in my brain._

 _I act like it's always that deep, and it's not. I mean, sometimes I just want to draw a pretty flower, and that's fine too. It's sort of still all there, though. Even if I don't think about it, I learned the shades and contours of every emotion somewhere._

 _And that's where you come in. I learned a lot of those from you, even if you don't remember it. Joy is a pale gold I'm sometimes brave enough to touch and a deep yet bright blue I can never quite capture._

 _Your pallette changed from when I lost you to when you found me again. Security was once a dark grey, but it evolved into a dark greenish color. Mine changed too. The soft greens of spring had been turned to blues and whites, like a small village becoming a harbor city._

 _Wood shades surrounded your discontempt, and my curiosity. I knew you had to be the same, but I could never quite prove it. Your brother, my brother, France, none would speak a word on the subject._

 _A thesis I could not prove, an illusion I could not touch, a mirage I could not reach. Just like the shade of sky I could never quite capture, there was an answer that looked close enough to smear a brush into but couldn't quite be reached._

 _My heart still burst with every second with you. Not even romantically, really, but it was overwhelmingly bright. Just being near you made me happy, and sometimes you would smile or let on that I was doing the same for you, and it made me want to cry. Not out of sadness, not like when I felt alone and abandoned, but just sheer joy. And that was incredible._

 _As time went on and I got closer to you, I saw that it barely mattered if you were that person I had looked for. Even if you weren't my light then, you most certainly are now. Even if you weren't my love before, I'll shout it with every shade of the rainbow that you are now._

 _With the most passionate shades of roses, I adore you. I only wish I had the courage to say it in words. Almost every nation I can think of has shades of it on their flag, but it's yours that I seek. Your emotion, your passion, your intensity. It's you my eyes are drawn to._

 _And that deep carmine is a shade I cannot bear to see, a color of fear and gunshots and loathing. I want to erase the red of blood with the white of waving cloth. I want to shield the fighting from my view, to wrap you up in a blank color where no harm can come to you._

 _But I'm the yellow of the sun, a shade of joy and cowardice. Bold enough to cry your name but too meek to do much else._

 _So we meet at orange, with passion and cheer. It's a burst of heat, a bolt of energy, a prick of flavor in a dull dish. Hard to ignore, hard to forget._

 _I feel safe within the greens you so often wear. It fills me with hope that maybe things can stay like this, or maybe I can overcome my yellow tendencies and forge a new path through the dark woods at your side._

 _But you are stable, you are precise, you are the purest lapis pigment crushed into the binder. All the heavens shine with the shade that reminds me that you are still beyond my reach._

 _And you, despite my reaching, fall somewhere into a shadow of violet. A color of ambition, and that's what you've always been full of. A noble color, a strong color, the dark knight who rides off into the orange sunset._

 _A yellow-orange and a blue-violet. Call me silly, but that compliment gives me hope. The shining sun in the indigo sky over the green earth; it's almost perfect, isn't it? But the black of night separates us until I can find the heart to rise above it._

 _So, um, this is that. This is me rising. And maybe I'll find the shade of the morning sky, or maybe it will escape me and I'll be left with nothing but a veil of silver clouds._

 _But I remember those violet flowers that made me panic, and the red ring. And even if what you said is true and that was only a misunderstanding, it still makes me think that maybe I'll be able to paint a clear sky tomorrow._

 _It won't always be clear, and that's fine. I want to weather storms. I want to find new shades of sadness. I want to keep feeling, because that's how I know I'm living. And you give me so much emotion, make my life so colorful._

 _Even if you don't love me back, it's fine. As long as you're still by my side, I can keep shining. You're my very best friend above all else, after all._

 _Con Tanto Amore,_

 _Veneziano Italia_

 _PS, I might have accidentally spilled paint on the couch, and it wouldn't really come out. Sorry! I swear it was an accident and I'm really sorry and I know I've said this a thousand times before but it won't happen again I swear!_

* * *

"I-Italy!"

Germany's voice echoed in the silent house, and the mad pounding of Italy's heart intensified. He'd found the letter. He'd actually read it. He had to have.

"I- I'm over here! St-still trying to cl-clean that paint up...", he weakly sputtered, regretting his brief spurt of bravery. God, he'd been so stupid to think that would work. It'd taken him ages to get that all how he wanted it, but he knew he hadn't said everything right and he wanted to scream as he heard footsteps coming towards him.

He couldn't even bring himself to look up from his pathetic attempts to remedy a fabric stain with cleaning wipes, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Germany getting closer to him.

A hand grabbed his shoulder, and very softly, his friend muttered "Ah, d-don't worry about the paint." Had he done something wrong? Germany's voice was shaking as much as his own. It'd been ages since he'd heard him like this.

Forcing himself to look up, he saw a sight more radiant than all the stars and rarer than a diamond. His dearest was smiling, a rose hue on his cheeks and a bright light in his eyes.

* * *

 _ **AN- Apparently, I can write happy things. It pains me greatly, but other than Italy's angstmuffining towards the beginning, this was pretty much just a fluff piece. ...What, you don't count philosophical thoughts on love and color theory as fluff? But that's the best kind of fluff! Either way, I know this might seem like a bit of an OOC take on Italy's character, but I just wanted to try something out. He's an artist, after all, and I've always found creating things like that to be a very emotional process. Plus I was just in a creative mood, so I did a thing. So, thanks for reading! -Twilight Joltik**_

 _ **PS, the Italian stuff at the beginning is basically like starting a letter with "My dear" and at the end it's basically "All my love".**_


End file.
